Fee for transferring embryos to another clinic

[Jennifer48]

Hello all, i have several embryos frozen at a clinic in Madrid that I have been having concerns about in terms of their approach and professionalism. I asked the assistant about the process for getting my embryos transferred to another clinic (still in Spain). The Madrid clinic say there is an administrative fee for me to pay them if I want to get my embryos transferred. As far as I recall, it wasn't mentioned on any document I signed. Is this normal practice and legal? Do they have the right to charge me for such a thing?
Thank you.

Hi,
I think they do yes. I looked this up as I was also researching moving them from EU to UK and a company does provide this service but was hideously expensive. The way they have to store and move them is very specific as liquid nitrogen plus the admin side so it wouldn't be free. Best of luck!

Hi OP I think a transfer fee is quite standard,.our clinic made us aware of this when we signed our consent forms - in the UK though, so I'm not sure about abroad. Best of luck

I’ve had treatment in Madrid, I think it’s fairly standard to be charged a fee. It’s probably not detailed in initial lists of fees because as a business I suppose they don’t want to ‘encourage’ it.
A different clinic we were with didn’t even want to give us a quote to move embryos from Spain to the UK as they said it was so complicated since Brexit they didn’t know where to start. (They may not have wanted to and it was hypothetical so we didn’t research it further).

Thank you for answers. IVF life has quoted 300 EUR to transfer my embryos to another clinic in Spain. I dont want to have to do it, but I don't have much confidence in the clinic at all and they haven't done anything to try to restore my confidence.